What Trotsky did for Soviet Russia. Leon Trotsky

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Davidovich Bronstein; October 26, 1879, Yanovka village, Kherson province, Russian Empire– August 22, 1940, Villa Coyacana, Mexico) - figure in the international labor and communist movement, theorist of Marxism, ideologist of one of its movements - Trotskyism. One of the organizers October Revolution 1917 and one of the founders of the Red Army. One of the founders and ideologists of the Comintern, member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In the Soviet government - People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs; in 1918–1925 - People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR, then the USSR. Member of the Politburo of the CPSU (b) in 1919–1926.

Encyclopedic reference

From the family of a wealthy colonist, he received his education at the Nikolaev Real School. He joined a circle of revolutionary-minded youth who were trying to conduct propaganda among the workers. Together with the Sokolovsky brothers, he formed the social democratic “South Russian Workers' Union” in 1897. Arrested in January 1898. He spent about 2 years in prison, after which he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. He served his exile initially in the village of Ust-Kutskoye (from August 1900), from February 1901 - in Nizhneilimskoye, then in Verkholensk, Irkutsk province. Here L.D. Trotsky actively studied Marxism, studied literary activity. The newspaper "Eastern Review" published his articles under the pseudonym "Antid Oto".

In February 1902 L.D. Trotsky arrived in Moscow, where he delivered a speech to local social democrats, and in August, with the help of the Siberian Social Democratic Union, he fled to Samara. Before entering the train car, he wrote down the name Trotsky on a blank passport form.

In the autumn of the same year he went to see V.I. Lenin in London. After January 9, 1905, he returned to Russia, joined the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, and then, after the arrest of G. S. Nosar (Khrustalev), was elected its chairman. In December 1905 he was arrested and in October 1906 he was exiled to Obdorsk, Tobolsk province, but fled from the road to Finland.

In 1907–1917 he tried to distance himself from both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, taking his own position on issues socialist revolution. On September 25, 1917, at the proposal of the Bolsheviks, he was again elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, accepted active participation in the preparation of the coup, was part of the Military Revolutionary Committee.

After the October Revolution L.D. Trotsky was the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Railways, Military and Naval Affairs, and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. He was a member of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and took part in a number of all-Russian discussions. In November 1927 he was expelled from the party, in 1928 he was expelled from Moscow, and a year later from the country. Abroad L.D. Trotsky continued the fight against Stalin. Organizer of the IV International (1938). Recent years spent his life in Mexico. On August 19, 1940, he was mortally wounded by GPU agent R. Mercader.

Irkutsk Historical and local history dictionary. - Irkutsk, 2011

Trotsky in Siberia

Trotsky spent almost two years at the very beginning of the 20th century in exile in the Irkutsk province (his daughters were born here). It was on the Irkutsk land that Leiba Bronstein, thinking before escaping what name to write in the handed over false passport, remembering his prison guard, wrote in the passport: “Trotsky.” In Irkutsk, through which he fled (to Samara), his comrades delivered a suitcase with underwear, a tie, and, as he put it, " other attributes of civilization". In the book "My Life. The experience of autobiography" he recalled:

Biography

Childhood and youth

Leiba Bronstein was born the fifth child in the family of David Leontievich Bronstein (1843-1922) and his wife Anna (Anetta) Lvovna Bronstein (née Zhivotovskaya) - wealthy landowners from among the Jewish colonists of an agricultural farm near the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (now the village of Bereslavka Bobrinetsky district of Kirovograd region, Ukraine). Leon Trotsky's parents came from the Poltava province. As a child, I spoke Ukrainian and Russian, and not the then widespread Yiddish. He studied at St. Paul's School in Odessa, where he was the first student in all disciplines. During his years of study in Odessa (1889-1895), Leon Trotsky lived and was raised in the family of his cousin (on his mother's side), the owner of the printing house and scientific publishing house "Matesis" Moisei Filippovich Shpenzer and his wife Fanny Solomonovna, the parents of the poetess Vera Inber.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

In 1896, in Nikolaev, Lev Bronstein participated in a circle, together with other members of which he conducted revolutionary propaganda. In 1897 he participated in the founding of the “South Russian Workers' Union”. On January 28, 1898, he was arrested for the first time. In the Odessa prison, where Trotsky spent 2 years, he becomes a Marxist. “The decisive influence,” he said on this occasion, “was made on me by two studies by Antonio Labriola on the materialistic understanding of history. Only after this book did I move on to Beltov and Capital.” The appearance of his pseudonym Trotsky dates back to the same time; it was the name of a local jailer who made an impression on the young Leva (he would write it into his false passport after his escape). In 1898, in prison, he married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, who was one of the leaders of the Union. Since 1900, he was in exile in the Irkutsk province, where he established contact with Iskra agents and, on the recommendation of G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, who gave him the nickname “Pero” for his obvious literary gift, was invited to collaborate in Iskra. In 1902 he escaped from exile abroad; In the false passport he “at random” entered the name Trotsky, after the name of the senior warden of the Odessa prison.

Arriving in London to see Lenin, Trotsky became a permanent contributor to the newspaper, gave abstracts at meetings of emigrants and quickly gained fame. A.V. Lunacharsky wrote about the young Trotsky:

“... Trotsky amazed the foreign public with his eloquence, significant for young man education and aplomb. ...They didn’t take him very seriously due to his youth, but everyone resolutely recognized his outstanding oratorical talent and, of course, felt that he was not a chicken, but an eaglet.”

First emigration

Insoluble conflicts in the editorial office of Iskra between the “old people” (G. V. Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod, V. I. Zasulich) and the “young people” (V. I. Lenin, Yu. O. Martov and A. N. Potresov) prompted Lenin to propose Trotsky as the seventh member of the editorial board; however, supported by all members of the editorial board, Trotsky was voted out by Plekhanov in the form of an ultimatum.

At the Second Congress of the RSDLP, in the summer of 1903, he supported Lenin so ardently that D. Ryazanov dubbed him “Lenin’s club.” However, the new composition of the editorial board proposed by Lenin: Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov - the exclusion of Axelrod and Zasulich from it prompted Trotsky to go over to the side of the offended minority and be critical of Lenin’s organizational plans.

In 1903 in Paris, Trotsky married Natalya Sedova (this marriage was not registered, since Trotsky never divorced A.L. Sokolovskaya).

In 1904, when serious political differences emerged between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Trotsky moved away from the Mensheviks and became close to A.L. Parvus, who attracted him to the theory of “permanent revolution.” At the same time, like Parvus, he advocated the unification of the party, believing that the impending revolution would smooth out many contradictions.
Revolution of 1905-1907.

In 1905, Trotsky returned illegally to Russia with Natalya Sedova. He was one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and joined its Executive Committee. Formally, the chairman of the Council was G. S. Khrustalev-Nosar, but in fact the Council was led by Parvus and Trotsky; after Khrustalev’s arrest on November 26, 1905. The Executive Committee of the Council officially elected Trotsky as chairman; but on December 3 he was arrested along with large group deputies. In 1906, at the trial of the St. Petersburg Council, which received wide public attention, he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights. On the way to Obdorsk (now Salekhard) he fled from Berezov.

Second emigration

In 1908-1912 he published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (in 1912 the Bolsheviks founded their own newspaper Pravda with the same name, which caused much controversy). Trotsky recalled in 1923:

« During my several years in Vienna I came into fairly close contact with the Freudians, read their works and even attended their meetings at that time.».

In 1914–1915, he published the daily newspaper “Our Word” in Paris.

In September 1915, he participated in the Zimmerwald Conference together with Lenin and Martov.

In 1916, he was expelled from France to Spain, from where the Spanish authorities deported him to the United States, where he continued his journalistic activities.

Return to Russia

Immediately after the February Revolution, Trotsky headed from America to Russia, but along the way, in the Canadian port of Halifax, he and his family were removed from the ship by the British authorities and sent to an internment camp for sailors of the German merchant fleet. The reason for the detention was the lack of Russian documents (Trotsky had an American passport issued personally by President Woodrow Wilson, with attached visas to enter Russia and British transit), as well as British fears about Trotsky’s possible negative influence on stability in Russia. However, soon, at the written request of the Provisional Government, Trotsky was released as an honored fighter against tsarism and continued his journey to Russia. On May 4, 1917, Trotsky arrived in Petrograd and became informal leader“Mezhrayontsy”, who took a critical position towards the Provisional Government. After the failure of the July uprising, he was arrested by the Provisional Government and accused, like many others, of espionage; at the same time, he was charged with traveling through Germany.

In July, at the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b), the Mezhrayontsy united with the Bolsheviks; Trotsky himself, who was at the Kresty at that time, which did not allow him to deliver the main report at the congress - “On the Current Situation” - was elected to the Central Committee. After the failure of the Kornilov speech in September, Trotsky was released, like other Bolsheviks arrested in July.

Expulsion from the USSR

In 1929, he was exiled outside the USSR - to Turkey to the island of Buyukada or Prinkipo - the largest of the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul. In 1932 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. Norway, fearing to worsen relations with the USSR, tried with all its might to get rid of the unwanted immigrant, confiscating all of Trotsky’s works and placing him under house arrest, and Trotsky was also threatened to hand him over to the Soviet government. Unable to withstand the oppression, Trotsky emigrated to Mexico in 1936, where he lived in the house of the family of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

In early August 1936, Trotsky completed work on the book “The Revolution Betrayed,” in which he called what was happening in the Soviet Union “Stalin’s Thermidor.” Trotsky accused Stalin of Bonapartism.

Trotsky wrote that " the lead backside of the bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution", while he stated that " with the help of the petty bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy managed to tie the proletarian vanguard hand and foot and crush the Bolshevik opposition"; His real indignation was the strengthening of his family in the USSR, he wrote: “ The revolution made a heroic attempt to destroy the so-called “family hearth,” that is, an archaic, musty and inert institution... The place of the family... was, according to plan, to be taken by a complete system of public care and service…».

In 1938 he proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International, the successors of which still exist today.

In 1938, Trotsky's eldest son, Lev Sedov, died in a hospital in Paris after an operation.

Trotsky Archive

During his exile from the USSR in 1929, Trotsky was able to take out his personal archive. This archive included copies of a number of documents signed by Trotsky during his time in power in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, the Central Committee, the Comintern, a number of notes by Lenin addressed personally to Trotsky and not published anywhere else, also a number of valuable information for historians about the revolutionary movement before 1917, thousands letters received by Trotsky, and copies of letters sent to him, telephone and address books, etc. Relying on his archive, Trotsky in his memoirs easily quotes a number of documents signed by him, including sometimes even secret ones. In total, the archive consisted of 28 boxes.

Stalin was unable to prevent (or was allowed to, which Stalin later in personal conversations called a big mistake, just like deportation) from Trotsky taking out his archives, but in the 30s, GPU agents repeatedly tried (sometimes successfully) to steal some of their fragments, and in March 1931, some of the documents were burned during a suspicious fire. In March 1940, Trotsky, in great need of money and fearing that the archive would eventually fall into the hands of Stalin, sold most of his papers to Harvard University.

At the same time, a number of other documents related to Trotsky’s activities are, according to historian Yu. G. Felshtinsky, also in other places, in particular, in the presidential archive Russian Federation, in the archives of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, etc.

Murder

In May 1940, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Trotsky's life. The assassination attempt was led by secret NKVD agent Grigulevich. The group of raiders was led by the Mexican artist and convinced Stalinist Siqueiros. Having burst into the room where Trotsky was, the attackers shot all the cartridges without aim and hastily disappeared. Trotsky, who managed to hide behind the bed with his wife and grandson, was not injured. According to Siqueiros, the failure was due to the fact that the members of his group were inexperienced and very worried.

Early in the morning of August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, who had previously penetrated Trotsky’s entourage as a staunch supporter of his, came to Trotsky to show his manuscript. Trotsky sat down to read it, and at that time Mercader hit him on the head with an ice pick, which he carried under his cloak. The blow was struck from behind and above the seated Trotsky. The wound reached 7 centimeters in depth, but Trotsky lived for almost another day after receiving the wound and died on August 21. After cremation, he was buried in the courtyard of a house in Coyocan.

The Soviet government publicly denied its involvement in the murder. The killer was sentenced by a Mexican court to twenty years in prison; in 1960, Ramon Mercader, who was released from prison and came to the USSR, was awarded the title of Hero Soviet Union with the presentation of the Order of Lenin.

Essays

Trotsky L. My life. The experience of an autobiography, in 2 volumes. Berlin: Granit, 1930.

Literature

Shaposhnikov V. N. Trotsky - employee of the Eastern Review // Izv. Sib. Departments of the USSR Academy of Sciences: Ser. history, philology and philosophy. 1989. Vol. 3.

Startsev V.I. L. D. Trotsky: Watered pages, biographies. M., 1989;

Ivanov A. Leon Trotsky in Siberian exile // Irkutsk Land. 1998. No. 10.

Trotsky L.D. My life. The experience of autobiography. M., 1991.

Links

Trotsky, Lev Davidovich. // Wikipedia

Leiba Bronstein was born on October 26 (November 7), 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Kherson province, in the family of landowner David Bronstein. In 1888 he entered the St. Paul School in Odessa and graduated from his final classes in Nikolaev. Lev Bronstein, 1888

The Second Congress was a big milestone in my life, if only because it separated me from Lenin for a number of years

Trotsky L.
"My Life"

In 1904, Trotsky left the Menshevik Party. He and his wife came to Munich and settled in the apartment of Alexander Parvus. Trotsky, having learned about the strike movement that had begun in Russia, arrived illegally in St. Petersburg, where, together with Parvus, they actually led the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. During the workers' strike in October, Trotsky was in the thick of things.

The fifty-two days of the existence of the first Council were full of work to capacity: the Council, the Executive Committee, continuous meetings and three newspapers. It’s unclear to me how we lived in this whirlpool.

Trotsky L.
"My Life"

On December 3, Trotsky was arrested for his “Financial Manifesto,” which called for accelerating the financial collapse of tsarism. In 1906, at the widely publicized trial of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights. In 1907, he escaped from the prison camp through Germany to Vienna, where he settled with his wife and children. Trotsky in a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, 1905

During this period, his relationship with Lenin became tense. Trotsky publishes the newspaper Pravda for workers and opposition intellectuals, and actively promotes the idea of unifying Social Democrats. A hostile campaign by the Bolsheviks unfolded against the Vienna Pravda. Lenin called Trotsky a “Judass” in the article “On the color of shame in Judas Trotsky,” which was published only in 1932 in the Pravda newspaper in the USSR. Lenin sent letters and articles to party bodies and the press in which he wrote that Trotsky and “Trotskyism” were dangerous. As a result, Lenin borrowed the name of Trotsky’s newspaper and began publishing the Bolshevik Pravda in St. Petersburg. It became the most influential newspaper in the Soviet Union.

On July 28, 1914, the First world war. Trotsky becomes a war correspondent and actively publishes. For revolutionary propaganda in the newspaper Nashe Slovo in September 1916 he was expelled from France.

In January 1917, Trotsky arrived in New York by ship, where he worked for the Russian newspaper " New world" Having received the news, he and his family went to Russia by ship. In Halifax, Canada, he and several other socialists were dropped off and sent to a concentration camp for prisoners of war. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, Miliukov, under pressure from the Council of Workers' Deputies, requested the release of the detainees. French passport of Leon Trotsky

Trotsky arrived in Petrograd through Sweden and Finland, where he joined the Interdistrict Organization and became its leader. By mid-1917 the group had grown from several hundred to four thousand members. Lenin sought to unite with the Mezhrayontsy. The unification took place at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(b), at which time Trotsky was elected to the party’s Central Committee.

Lenin and Trotsky celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution, 1919

In this struggle, Trotsky was defeated - on January 26, 1925, he was deprived of military leadership. In 1926, Trotsky formed an opposition bloc with Kamenev and Zinoviev, his former opponents, and began to openly oppose Stalin's line. Soon the opposition platform went underground. There was organized persecution against her.

accept the Mexican authorities. Trotsky settled in Coyoacan first in " Blue House"by the artist Frida Kahlo, and then at a villa nearby.

Leon Trotsky (second from left) with Frida Kahlo.

Meanwhile, a show trial was organized in Moscow, at which Trotsky was called an agent of Hitler and sentenced to death in absentia.
Trotsky began writing a book about Stalin, met with journalists from various publications, proclaimed the creation of the Fourth International - the Trotskyist international organization, which set its main goal world revolution and the victory of the working class.

Trotsky, in response to the Moscow trials, recorded a video message to the world community, in which he accused Stalin of despotism. “It was not communism and socialism that gave birth to this court, but Stalinism,” says Trotsky. He claims that the trial of him and his former comrades in the opposition (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov and others) is based on false evidence in the interests of the ruling elite.

There were two attempts on Trotsky's life. On May 24, the Mexican artist, Stalinist José David Alfaro Siqueiros and a group of militants drove up to Trotsky’s villa and fired about two hundred bullets into the walls, doors and windows of the house. Trotsky and his family survived. In parallel with the Siqueiros group, an NKVD agent infiltrated Trotsky’s trust. He entered his house and on August 20, 1940, dealt a fatal blow with an ice ax, from which Trotsky died the next day.

Lev (Leiba) Davidovich Trotsky ( real name- Bronstein) was born on October 26, 1879 near Yanovka (Kherson province, Little Russia), in the family of a wealthy Jewish landowner. Already in his early youth, he became interested in revolutionary ideas and began promoting them among the workers of Nikolaev, where he took a course at a real school. In January 1898, Lev was arrested, spent about two years in prison, and then was exiled to Lena.

In 1902, he escaped from exile using a false passport issued under the name Trotsky, went to London and began working there for the Marxist newspaper " Spark" In his views, Trotsky stood closer to the left wing of the Iskra editorial board. But, not wanting to submit to the primacy of the leader of this wing, Lenin, he II Congress of the RSDLP(1903) did not join Bolsheviks, and to Mensheviks. Trotsky soon put forward the theory of “permanent revolution”, according to which in Russia the working class should take power before the bourgeoisie, assist the proletarian revolution in Europe and, together with it, move towards socialism.

Leon Trotsky. Photo ok. 1920-1921

Trotsky. Series. Series 1-2

Trotsky and Bolshevism. Polish poster, 1920

After education Council of People's Commissars Trotsky became its People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In December 1917 - January 1918, he led the Soviet delegation in negotiations with the Germans about the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. During them, Trotsky put forward the famous slogan: “no peace, no war, but disband the army” - that is, end the war without recognizing the German conquests with a formal peace treaty.

In March 1918, Trotsky took the post of military commissar and took an active part in the creation of the Red Army. Leading it during the Civil War, he acted with merciless cruelty. Trotsky reinforced the Red Army discipline by executing every tenth person in the units that fought poorly, and ordered the whites and the rebel people to be destroyed without pity. Through " decossackization“He tried to exterminate the Cossacks - the most organized and militant part of the Russians. At the end of the Civil War, Trotsky was going to drive the entire population of the Soviet state into military prisons. labor armies", but the growth of widespread uprisings in 1920 - early 1921 forced the Bolsheviks to make a "strategic retreat" and proclaim NEP.

Leon Trotsky and the Red Army

In 1922-1923, due to Lenin’s illness, a struggle for power began in the RCP (b). The “troika” of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kameneva. The Trotskyists were defeated in the battle with her at the top. In January 1925, Trotsky lost the posts of military people's commissar and chairman Revolutionary Military Council.

Trotsky. Series. Episodes 3-4

However, soon after this Stalin entered into rivalry with Zinoviev and Kamenev. The last two began to seek support from their former enemy Trotsky and together with him formed “ united opposition", mainly from the "old Bolsheviks". She demanded to begin “accelerated industrialization” by plundering the “petty-bourgeois” countryside - that is, to curtail the NEP. At this stage, Stalin, for personal purposes, falsely presented himself as a supporter of its preservation.

Dispersed November 7, 1927 demonstrations, organized by the opposition in honor of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin achieved the expulsion of Trotsky to Alma-Ata (January 1928), and then his deportation from the USSR (February 1929).

Trotsky settled in Turkey, on the island of Prinkipo (near Istanbul). He did not stop his political and literary activities there, fiercely condemning the “gravedigger of the revolution” Stalin. Trotsky conducted his agitation not only for the USSR, but also for Western communists. He won over a considerable part of them, who broke with the “Stalinist” Comintern and founded her own - Fourth International.

In 1933 Trotsky moved to France, and in 1935 to Norway. Forced to leave this country due to Soviet pressure, he moved (1937) to Mexico, to the “leftist” President Lazaro Cardenas. Trotsky lived there in a villa in Coyoacan, the guest of the radical artist Diego Rivera.

Stalin, meanwhile, ordered an operation to kill him. In May 1940, Trotsky survived a dangerous attack carried out by a group led by the famous artist A. Siqueiros, but on August 20, 1940, another NKVD agent, Ramon Mercader, dealt him a fatal blow to the head with an ice pick.

See also articles:

Soviet party and statesman Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Leiba Bronstein) was born on November 7 (October 26, old style) 1879 in the village of Yanovka, Elisavetgrad district, Kherson province (Ukraine) into a wealthy family. From the age of seven he attended Jewish religious school, which he did not complete. In 1888, he was sent to study in Odessa, then moved to Nikolaev, where in 1896 he entered the Nikolaev Real School, and upon graduation began attending lectures at the Faculty of Mathematics of Odessa University. Here Trotsky became friends with radical, revolutionary-minded youth and took part in the creation of the South Russian Workers' Union.

In January 1898, Trotsky, along with like-minded people, was arrested and sentenced to four years of exile in Eastern Siberia. While under investigation in Butyrka prison, he married a fellow revolutionary, Alexandra Sokolovskaya.

In September 1902, having left his wife and two daughters, he escaped from exile, using false documents under the name Trotsky, which later became a well-known pseudonym.

In October 1902, he arrived in London and immediately established contact with the leaders of Russian social democracy living in exile. Lenin highly appreciated Trotsky's abilities and energy and proposed his candidacy for the editorial office of Iskra.

In 1903, in Paris, Leon Trotsky married Natalya Sedova, who became his faithful companion.

In the summer of 1903, Trotsky participated in the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy, where he supported Martov’s position on the issue of the party charter. After the congress, Trotsky, together with the Mensheviks, accused Lenin and the Bolsheviks of dictatorship and destruction of the unity of the Social Democrats. Since 1904, Trotsky advocated the unification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

When the first Russian revolution began, Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg and in October 1905 took an active part in the work of the St. Petersburg Council, becoming one of its three co-chairs.

The development of the so-called theory by Trotsky, together with Alexander Parvus (Gelfand), dates back to this time. “permanent” (continuous) revolution: in his opinion, the revolution will win only with the help of the world proletariat, which, having completed its bourgeois stage, will move on to the socialist one.

During the revolution of 1905-1907, Trotsky proved himself to be an extraordinary organizer, speaker, and publicist. He was the de facto leader of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and editor of its newspaper Izvestia.

In 1907, he was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but escaped on the way to his place of exile.

From 1908 to 1912, Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna and tried to create an “August bloc” of social democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judass”.

In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for Kiev Thought in the Balkans; two years later, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland, and then to France and Spain. Here he joined the editorial office of the left-wing socialist newspaper Nashe Slovo.

In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the United States.

Trotsky welcomed February revolution 1917 as the beginning of the long-awaited permanent revolution. In May 1917, he returned to Russia, and in July he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He was chairman of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, one of the leaders of the October armed uprising.

After the Bolshevik victory on October 25 (November 7), 1917, Trotsky entered the first Soviet government as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Supported Lenin in the fight against plans to create a coalition government of all socialist parties. At the end of October, he organized the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Krasnov advancing on it.

In 1918-1925, Trotsky was People's Commissar for Military Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. He was one of the founders of the Red Army and personally supervised its actions on many fronts of the Civil War. Done great job to attract former tsarist officers and generals ("military experts") to the Red Army. He widely used repression to maintain discipline and “establish revolutionary order” at the front and in the rear, being one of the theorists and practitioners of the “Red Terror.”

Member of the Central Committee in 1917-1927, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-1926.

At the end civil war and in the early 1920s, Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.

In 1920-1921, Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP. He participated in the creation of the Comintern; was the author of his Manifesto. In the famous “Letter to the Congress,” noting Trotsky’s shortcomings, Lenin called him the most outstanding and capable person from the entire then composition of the Central Committee.

Before Lenin's death and especially after it, a struggle for power broke out among the Bolshevik leaders. After Lenin's death, Leon Trotsky's bitter struggle with Joseph Stalin for leadership ended in Trotsky's defeat.

In 1924, Trotsky’s views (so-called Trotskyism) were declared a “petty-bourgeois deviation” in the RCP(b). For his leftist opposition views, he was expelled from the party, in January 1928 he was exiled to Alma Ata, and in 1929, by decision of the Politburo, he was expelled from the USSR.

In 1929-1933, Trotsky lived with his wife and eldest son Lev Sedov in Turkey on the Princes' Islands (Sea of Marmara). In 1933 he moved to France, in 1935 to Norway. At the end of 1936, he left Europe and settled in Mexico, in the house of the artist Diego Rivera, then in a fortified and carefully guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City, the city of Coyocan.

He sharply criticized the policies of the Soviet leadership and refuted the statements of official propaganda and Soviet statistics.
Trotsky was the initiator of the creation of the 4th International (1938), the author of works on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, literary critical articles, books “Lessons of October”, “History of the Russian Revolution”, “The Betrayed Revolution”, memoirs “My Life”, etc.

In the USSR, Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia; his first wife and youngest son Sergei Sedov, who pursued an active Trotskyist policy, was shot.

In 1939, Stalin gave the order to liquidate Leon Trotsky. In May 1940, the first attempt to kill him, organized by the Mexican communist artist David Siqueiros, failed.

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded by the Spanish communist and NKVD agent Ramon Mercader. He died on August 21, and after cremation was buried in the courtyard of his house in Coyocan, where his museum is now located.

The material was prepared based on open sources

He was born on February 7, 1913 in Barcelona, and died in 1978 in Cuba. Now his ashes lie in the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. On the grave it is written: “Lopez Ramon Ivanovich.”

It would seem that everything has become a thing of the past... But recently a wreath appeared on the grave with the inscription: “From grateful Cossacks,” which caused, to put it mildly, a mixed reaction.

“He killed the great bastard, the executioner of the Cossacks and the entire Russian people,” the Cossacks justified their position.

— He carried out the order of another executioner — Stalin, others objected to them.

And still others generally stated:

— For every hater of Russia there is one Mercader.

In general, the story turned out to be closer than it seemed...

Charming killer

On August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Mercader arrived at the villa Trotsky in Mexico City under the pretext that he wanted to show him his article. When Trotsky began to read, Mercader hit him on the head with an ice pick. Trotsky did not die immediately - he managed to call for help. Security burst in, they tied up Mercader, taking away his pistol in addition to the murder weapon. Why didn't he use it right away?

Pavel Sudoplatov, one of the organizers of the murder (the other was Nahum Eitingon), wrote about this in his memoirs: “We came to the conclusion that it is best to use a knife or a small climber’s ice ax: firstly, they are easier to hide from the guard, and secondly, these murder weapons are silent.”

Mercader infiltrated Trotsky's circle in a ridiculously simple way - he seduced the sister of his secretary Sylvia Ageloff. Much more curious is how he lulled the guards' vigilance.

Mercader introduced himself as a Canadian businessman Frank Jackson, real person who died during the Spanish Civil War. The object of his interests was not politics, but commerce, sports and, of course, Sylvia. Clear suspicion could have arisen if, at the first meeting with the guards, he had expressed his sympathies for Trotsky and his comrades. But he seemed not to notice the existence of the great Lev Davidovich in this world.

For several months he kept a low profile and did not seek to make acquaintance with the inhabitants of this fortified house. As a result, after dry greetings, the guards began to warmly welcome Frank when he brought Sylvia to the house. The successful businessman began treating his guards to expensive cigars.

He was finally invited into the house and introduced to Trotsky, who saw in him an intelligent, but indifferent to politics, a typical young businessman - and nothing more. In response, Frank began to show interest in Trotsky’s personality and activities, began reading his journalism, and then writing his own. It was on this that Mercader caught Trotsky, who, after several assassination attempts, was prone to manic suspicion.

Tall brunette

According to the recollections of everyone who knew him, Ramon Mercader had a charming appearance and noble manners; it’s not for nothing that he plays him in one movie Alain Delon. He had powerful physical strength; with a height of 185 centimeters, he could bend three fingers copper coin. In prison he was subjected not only to torture, but also to long psychological testing. It showed that Mercader had an unusually fast reaction, an almost photographic memory, the ability to navigate in the dark, and the ability to quickly assimilate and remember complex instructions. In the dark, he could disassemble and reassemble a Mauser rifle in 3 minutes 45 seconds. Mercader did not admit that he is an agent Soviet intelligence. After 20 years in prison, he was released and became a secret Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1961-1974 he worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee (IML).

I talked with veterans - employees of the archive of the former IML, who met with Mercader. He is remembered as an elegant man with beautiful eyes. He was immediately recognizable as a foreigner. They did not notice the complacency on the face of Lopez (that was his official name) and the constant presence of his Hero star. He was modest and charming, but a man of few words. He said that he was given the Hero for his military merits; he wore the star at official events or to help friends purchase tickets to a theater or concert.

And he also resolutely asked the main thing Soviet ideologist Mikhail Suslov release comrades Sudoplatov and Eitingon from prison. Under Khrushchev they were condemned as Beria's people. Suslov was indignant and rudely replied: “Don’t stick your nose into things that aren’t your own.” Mercader was a man of strong self-control, but he was still offended.

In the mid-70s by invitation Fidel Castro he went to Cuba. He worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, died of cancer in 1978. According to his will, he was buried in the USSR. Shortly before his death, Ramon Mercader said: “If I had to relive the forties, I would do everything I did.”